To tie the in-plant more closely to the academic side of the university, Paul Jones, director of Ashland University Printing & Imaging Solutions, recently forged a partnership with the school’s Fine Arts program. He contacted Assistant Professor of Art Jessica Maloney, who brought her Digital Art classes to the in-plant to learn more about the printing process and see a different side of the digital art world.

“In the classroom, we have a large-format printer, but the tours really gave them a sense of commercial printing, which is not a topic I spend a lot of time on in class,” notes Maloney. She says that after the visit, students were very interested in learning more about the printing process.

The tour consisted of students seeing how all of the different software in the print shop worked, as well as examining the physical production of the different products the department produces. They watched the whole process, from beginning to end.

“I feel it was really great and important to get the students in here and see how this all works,” remarks Jones. “Although not all of them will go into exactly what we do, most of them will be creating digital art files in their line of work.”

Although the students are the main ones benefiting from this experience, the in-plant also benefited by gaining two student interns. The students came based upon the recommendation of Professor Maloney.

Both Jones and Maloney are pleased with the results of the inaugural semester and will continue the class visits and internships in every semester to come. Through these opportunities, Ashland University’s Fine Arts students will not only develop their professional and personal selves further, but also enrich their lives and supplement AU’s mission of “Accent on the Individual.”

—By Abbey Bartosiak

BEFORE LAST July, managing the print workflow at Ashland University Printing & Imaging Solutions was, let's say, a bit cumbersome.

"We would print out our job tickets, and then we would enter it in a system, print out a separate copy [and] take it to our business manager," recalls Paul Jones, director of the Ashland, Ohio-based in-plant. But that wasn't the end of the paper trail. The business manager would then prepare an Excel spreadsheet to send to the business office. There, someone would key in this information yet again, this time into the university's main administrative software, so money could be transferred from departmental accounts.

The inefficiency of this Excel-based system was wearing down Jones and his staff. So with the support of the business office, the in-plant secured funding last summer to acquire EDU Business Solutions' Print Shop Pro Manager software, along with WebDesk, Document Converter and Template Builder.

Since then, life has been so much simpler for the in-plant's six full-time and four part-time and student workers. Customers can now pull up previous jobs and review the details, sparing staff from fielding their calls. Productivity has improved as a result of orders being placed online through WebDesk. And Jones can now quickly call up accurate, reliable job data to create reports for management—something he now does weekly, compared to just two or three times a year with the old system.

"Just a couple of clicks...and you're done," he remarks, adding that he recently created a report in five minutes that would have taken him an hour previously.

Having all this job data so close at hand is helping to ensure the shop's survival in tough times.

"We use it...to justify our existence," Jones affirms.

A Busy In-plant

Founded in 1878, Ashland University is a mid-sized, private, non-profit university located on a 135-acre campus in north central Ohio. Printing & Imaging Solutions serves all campus departments, as well as students, local schools, private businesses and non-profit community organizations. In 2011, Jones says, almost 20 percent of the in-plant's revenue came from outside the university.